Whether it is justified or not, trust in news media last year reached an all-time low, following five decades of decline. A Pew Research Center study in 2009 revealed 63 percent of survey respondents believed media was, “biased and shaped by special interests”.

All you have to do is flip on the major cable television news channels to see a disparity of coverage of the same events, and moreover, an overarching ideology that pervades the presentation of some programs. It is an unfortunate result of the fight for dominance among some news organizations to capture audiences in these times of increased competition. Yet, just one of the issues in how news is covered and what is reported, as we all know from the elevation of, say, the recent court appearance and incarceration of Lindsay Lohan as a top story, complete with live coverage of her car driving down the California highway. (Ahhh, such fond memories of O.J. coverage of which journalists everywhere were so proud.)

Increasingly, news media fail to serve the public interest. According to New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks in “The Culture of Exposure” (June 24, 2010),“During World War II and the years just after, a culture of reticence prevailed. The basic view was that human beings are sinful, flawed and fallen. What mattered most was whether people could overcome their flaws and do their duty as soldiers, politicians and public servants. Reporters suppressed private information and reported mostly — and maybe too gently — on public duties.”

Brooks goes on to say that after Vietnam (and I would argue, also, Watergate), “an ethos of exposure swept the culture.” He adds, “The assumption among many journalists was that the establishment may seem upstanding, but there is a secret corruption deep down. It became the task of journalism to expose the underbelly of public life, to hunt for impurity, assuming that the dark hidden lives of public officials were more important than the official performances.”

It’s easy to see what Brooks is referring to. Peccadilloes and sex scandals are “top stories,” while pressing concerns about public safety, environment and the goings-on in our legislative bodies remain the stuff of yawns and sound bites divorced of meaning and context.

It’s incumbent, then, for the will of the people to prevail, and for public servants to address it. That’s why providing legislative proceedings in a user-friendly fashion, online where they’re widely accessible, can begin to address the problem of warped news and the erosion of trust. When the errant nodding senator or the representative with a wardrobe issue becomes the overriding story of a legislative hearing, we’re not getting to see the important information about that event. Better that we have an opportunity to easily seek the information ourselves and decide what WE think is important.

It will be a revelation for news organizations that have dumbed down their offerings to the point of tragedy. There’s a great sector of the public — and I’m not just talking the new Tea Party activists or the so-called “elite” intellectual class — who value Truth and access to information. What’s being done now can be done so much better.

Says Brooks, “The exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.”

The news media model of serving the public interest is broken. The NEW media model of open and transparent access to government proceedings can help repair that damage and restore the public faith.